Category Archives: Freebies

Sometimes I suck so bad, it makes me crylaugh and snort simultaneously. I just glanced at my fridge door and noticed the calendar from January still hanging on it. It’s amazing how our brains can become unresponsive to certain things after a while, and while I have no idea of the cause to make me see it with new eyes again, instead of writing a to do in my calendar, I made the two missing calendars in one go. And I will write a note in it to make April’s calendar to post – before March is completely over.

Here’s the one for February, in case you wish to make retroactive scribbles still:

And the one for March:

I hope you enjoy them! Please comment if you find something wrong with the pdf file, and I’ll see if I can fix the problem.

Hello everyone, it’s been a while since I posted my last update on Tokyo Subway Map QAL and I finally have the fabric. I also received the Moleskine about two weeks ago, but as I was printing some things to put into it, I ran out of glue tape. The grocery stores didn’t carry it, but an office supplies store wasn’t immediately on my path, so it’s taken longer than expected to get on a roll with the new Bullet Journal gone GTD. There are finally some photos I want to post, but that will wait until next week.

In the meantime, the little thank you I have promised to share! You’ll find the download button at the end of the post, and the file is uploaded to WordPress directly, so no worries about weird external link sources.

I’ve decided to post a free printable Quilty Calendar each month this year, and that is the one for January. Mine is already on the fridge, so printing works on Mac at least. The format is A4 and make sure to print at 100% even if your paper is US letter.

Why “quilty”? Well, I like graphic shapes, and the greyscale was chosen to accommodate also those with black-and-white printing as only option at home. Plus it is nice with a subdued colour palette from time to time.

If you’re curious about the typography, the month is written in Anders by Tom Anders Watkins, who happens to be half-Finnish by the way. Anders is a free font, as is Questrial by Admix Designs, the one used in the calendar portion. As usual, should you install them for your own use, make sure to read the licences, which in particular on Behance vary quite a bit. A safe choice is FontSquirrel, the source of Questrial linked above, with their free fonts for commercial use.

Enjoy the calendar and please respect the copyright! Refer your friends to my blog and I’m very happy. 2016 is go!

Oh my, I’m so excited that Wednesday has finally arrived! You know, Organising Wednesday! Because I have a printable to share with you, to help you organise your sewing. I have quite a few projects going on currently, and many of them have deadlines I can’t miss, and so I started pondering what to include in a one-page, monthly overview to cover several of the needs that quilters of Instagram might have.

There are bees and block-of-the month quilts, swaps and challenges or competitions, and gifts and other projects to make! And it all is very fun as long as the house of cards doesn’t tumble down in a glorious kaboom.

Today, I put the final touches to this printable pdf (non-editable), customised to the needs of active quilters, and you can download it – for your personal use – at the end of this post. If you want to tip your friends about it, do direct them to my blog, rather than distribute the pdf itself.

So how do you use it? The idea is to check the box at a particular date, and describe the project by name in the “Project” field. For example, if your swap mosaic is due to be posted on 1 October, tick that box on that date, and use the project name in the corresponding column. 1 October is a milestone, but if you finish the task before, it might come in handy to write the earlier (or later, god forbid… :P) date in the “Done” column.

“Directions” in Bee Quilts means the stuff you need to send your bee friends, when it is your turn to be Queen Bee. Are there other confusing things about the columns? Please ask!

I tend to think that I can recall stuff later, but sometimes when there are many balls to juggle simultaneously, it’s easier not to rely on memory at all, but keep consulting an outside resource. And my printable might be just that.

Testing, testing… The pdf has been viewed in both Adobe Acrobat Reader and Preview on Mac, and printed (A4 paper). Everything works beautifully at my end, and if the fonts give you grief, please install League Gothic and Sacramento.

Printing of pdfs made in Scribus, an open-source software, means you may have to adjust the percentage manually to 100%. I’ve heard of other software allowing the designer to set this number to 100%, but it isn’t an option I have. If your paper size is different from the international standard A4, please test with one page before printing all of them, as you may have to adjust the output a bit.

Feel free to add suggestions to the 2016 printable, which will be available for purchase (nothing overly expensive, but just to keep some of my blogging expenses covered) later this year!

Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project is the foundation of this free printable, Habit Building. Her book is written according to the calendar year, but I’ve made this printable to suit a start any time of the year. Just scribble “December 2013” after Month 1, if you begin your project next month. I’ve started this month, so my text says “November 2013 – Sleep”, because I need to stabilise my sleeping rhythm once and for all.

“The Happiness Project” has been translated to other languages by now and it is quite well-know, so chances are good your local library might carry it, if you don’t want to purchase a copy for yourself. First I did just this, but found it to be so useful that I ended up buying it. Enjoy your printable!

The Very Serious part: The printables are intended for your personal use only and please refer family and friends to this blog instead of just copying the file, too. You are prohibited from altering it, claiming it to be your work, and all the other yadayada that goes with copyright rules.

Special Days is a free printable, the first in a series, which will be published before New Year’s this year. I’ve tried to use a digital system for a while and in theory it works, but currently I need pen and paper to get things done. Since I’ve made these for myself, I might as well share them with you! Plot birthdays, namedays, anniversaries, and other nice days on it, and put it in your home management binder!

And speaking of it, if you know about Getting Things Done, you might find some features particularly useful for you in the coming organisers. If you haven’t been introduced to the method by David Allen just yet, I’ll explain how to use future printables in the posts.

I’ve made them to fit A4 papers, which are slightly differently sized compared to the U.S. letter size, but it should work just fine to “print all image” or something similar, or perhaps adjust from 100% to slightly smaller. Whenever I print from letter-sized pdf’s to A4 paper, I adjust in a similar fashion and it works like a charm, so please don’t let this stop you!

The printables are intended for your personal use only and please refer family and friends to this blog instead of just copying the file, too. You are prohibited from altering it, claiming it to be your work, and all the other yadayada that goes with copyright rules.

Now that the boring necessities are done with, please download this printable Special Days from Dropbox! Please let me know if you have problems downloading or using the file itself.

Inspired by Sunday’s post on Valentine’s Day gifts, I’ve made two printable cards that you can download for your personal use. You will need 8.5″ x 11″ cardstock and of course a colour printer. A paper cutter and a bone folder are handy tools, as well, since each print makes two cards. The two screenshots are what the cards will look like when folded (the card itself is slightly larger but you get the picture):

Hi, I'm Nina from Helsinki, Finland. Welcome to my blog! I'm a bit of a fabric freak and quilting is what I'm working on learning mostly, but there's some general sewing and knitting going on, too. I'm also a novice pattern designer, with projects happening "behind the seams" for NM Patterns in both quilting and embroidery. The blog itself is a work in progress, whilst I'm tweaking things to make your experience as nice and easy as possible. If you comment on posts, please expect a reply there :) Hope you enjoy your visit!

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I’m participating…

In 2015…

...I would love to learn new things in a focussed way. While it may sound a bit boring to have a checklist, it still gives a lot of freedom within a rather loose framework.
Instead of specific projects, I'm thinking the following techniques would be nice to try at least once:
1. Appliqué - Raw-edge Done 17.9.2015
2. Piping
3. Curves - Done 20.7.2015
4. Full circles, as per Craftsy class
5. Quilt as you go
6. English paper piecing
7. Zipper neatly in place - Done 23.7.2015
8. Free-motion quilting
9. Quilting by hand - Done
10. Snap thingies
11. Spiral quilting

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